The film picks up four years after the events of Jurassic Park. On a deserted
island, dinosaurs have secretly survived
and been allowed to roam free but a mercenary group desires to
capture and bring the dinosaurs to the mainland. John Hammond, who
has lost control of his InGen company, sees a
chance to redeem himself for his past mistakes and sends an
expedition led by Dr. Ian Malcolm to
reach the island before the mercenaries get there. The two groups
confront each other in the face of extreme danger and must team up
for their own survival in a race against time.

After the release of the original book and the success of the first
film, Crichton was pressured not only by fans, but Spielberg
himself, for a sequel novel. After the book was published in 1995,
production began on a film sequel. The film received a 49% approval
rating from critics at Rotten
Tomatoes and 59 out of 100 at Metacritic. The film earned over USD$612 million at the worldwide box office,
USD$300 million fewer than the predecessor. It is currently the
forty-fourth -highest-grossing feature
film.

Plot

A family is vacationing on the island of Isla Sorna. A young girl
(Camilla Belle) explores on her own
and runs into a baby Compsognathus. When the child attempts to
feed the dinosaur, a large pack emerges and attacks the girl for
more food. Her parents run to her when they hear her screams, and
though it is not shown what happens to her, it is later stated that
she was injured.

Hammond summons Malcolm to his home, where he reveals the existence
of Site B, Isla Sorna. Sorna was the facility where the dinosaurs
were actually engineered, before being sent to Isla Nublar when
mature. The island was abandoned after a hurricane wiped out most
of the facilities, and the creatures have been living in the wild
ever since. Hammond reveals to Malcolm that InGen is bankrupt, and that Ludlow plans to exploit Site B.
Hammond requests Malcolm's help in stopping Ludlow and preserving
the dinosaurs' natural habitat, by creating a wildlife portfolio
that will convince environmentalists to leave the island as a
nature reserve. Malcolm initially
refuses, but after learning that his girlfriend, paleontologist
Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is
already on the island, he goes along.

Malcolm is joined by Eddie Carr (Richard
Schiff), an engineer who built the group's custom vehicles, and
documentary producer and environmentalist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn). Shortly after arriving on the
island, they find Sarah while coming across a Stegosaurus herd. When they return to camp,
they find Kelly (Vanessa Lee
Chester), Malcolm's daughter, has stowed away. He tries to
contact the boat to take them home, but they are interrupted by the
arrival of an InGen team sent by Ludlow.

The rival team quickly captures samples of several species,
including Parasaurolophus,
Stegosaurus, Gallimimus, Pachycephalosaurus, Triceratops, and a swarm of
Compsognathus. That night, Nick and Sarah sneak into the
InGen camp to free the dinosaurs and cut the fuel lines on the
vehicles. The freed dinosaurs cause a huge commotion, compounded by
the exploding vehicles. Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), the leader of the
InGen team, admonishes his second-in-command, Dieter Stark
(Peter Stormare), for the lack of
security.

Tembo wishes to capture an adult male Tyrannosaurus, and creates a trap by
breaking the leg of a baby T. Rex so that its cries might lure its
parents. When he returns to the camp, Nick frees the baby, taking
it back to their trailer so Sarah can set its broken leg. Eddie and
Kelly hide in a tree stand while Malcolm returns to the trailer.
The adult Tyrannosaurs come searching for their child and, after
retrieving it, throws one half of the hinged trailer over a cliff
with Malcolm, Nick, and Sarah inside. Eddie throws down a rope and
tries to pull the trailer back up using one of the SUVs, but is
torn in half and eaten by the Tyrannosaurs. The trailer falls off
the cliff, but its occupants survive by holding on to the rope,
only to be rescued by the InGen team. With all of the
communications equipment destroyed in the attacks, both groups team
up to reach the old InGen compound's radio station, right through a
Velociraptor nesting site,
while Sarah suspects the adult Tyrannosaurs will continue pursuing
them.

On the way, Stark goes off in the woods where he is killed by
compys. At night, the female Tyrannosaur comes across the group's
camp and pokes her head into Sarah and Kelly's tent sniffing
Sarah's jacket covered with blood from the baby's leg. One of the
InGen team members wakes up and notices the Tyrannosaur. His shouts
awaken the other group members and they all run, with the
Tyrannosaur in pursuit. Tembo tries but fails to shoot the male
Tyrannosaur, finding his ammunition disabled by Nick. Nick, Sarah,
Kelly are later joined by Malcolm at a waterfall and escape safely
after the T-Rex takes off. However, Tembo uses a traqualizing gun
to try to knock the male Tyrannosaur out, taking him only 2
shots.

After fleeing the female Tyrannosaur, the InGen team passes through
a field of tall grass and are picked off one-by-one by Velociraptors. Malcolm and his friends
pass through the field unharmed and Nick reaches the compound, but
the others are attacked by three raptors and go into hiding. Kelly
wounds one of them by knocking it out of a window and Sarah manages
to pit the last two against each other. Ian, Sarah, and Kelly then
run towards a building, where they reunite with Nick and contact a
rescue helicopter. As they fly away, they see that Tembo has caged
the male Tyrannosaur from tranquilizing it during the camp attack,
and Ludlow preparing to ship it and the baby back to the
mainland.

When the ship carrying the dinosaur arrives in San Diego, it
crashes into the dock. A boarding party finds out the entire crew
is dead. While searching for survivors, a guard opens the cargo
hold and inadvertently releases the Tyrannosaur, which enters the
city. Malcolm and Sarah learn that the Tyrannosaur stopped
breathing due to a tranquilizer overdose, it was given amphetamines
to bring it round, but not knowing the proper dosage, they
administered too much and the dinosaur is out of control. Realizing
that the Tyrannosaur will likely come for its infant, Malcolm and
Sarah rush to the Jurassic Park arena to get the baby T. rex, which
had been brought in separately by plane. They lure the adult with
the baby and run back to the boat. Ludlow tries to intervene, but
is trapped in the cargo hold and devoured by the baby. Malcolm and
Sarah manage to tranquilize the adult before it can escape again,
and seal it in the hold.

By morning, as Malcolm and Sarah fall asleep on the couch in their
living room, Kelly watches television reports of the cargo ship on
its way back to Site B, surrounded by a convoy of naval vessels.
The program breaks away to an interview of restored InGen Chairman
John Hammond, who explains that the island will now be left alone
as a natural reserve so the dinosaurs can live free of human
interference. He offers a quote by Malcolm, "Life will find a way."
The scene cuts to Site B, where the family of Tyrannosaurs is shown
reunited in the wild, alongside a herd of Stegosaurs migrating and
a flock of Pteranodons flying
overhead.

Production

After the release of the novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton was
pressured by fans for a sequel novel. Having never written a
sequel, he initially refused, until the success of the first film
prompted Steven Spielberg himself to request one. After the book
was published in 1995, production on the sequel film began in
September 1996.

The
Lost World was filmed at Eureka, San Diego, Burbank, and Kauai.
Although the ending takes place in San Diego, only one sequence is
actually shot there, where the InGen helicopter flies over the
wharf and banks towards the city. The other sequences were all shot
in Burbank.

Spielberg suggested the Tyrannosaurus rex attack through
San Diego be added to the film story, inspired by a similar attack
scene of a Brontosaurus in
London in the 1925 film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
The Lost
World.

Many elements from the original Jurassic
Park novel that were not in the first film were used for
Lost World. The opening sequence of the vacationing
family's young daughter (Camilla Belle) being attacked in Costa Rica by a group of Compsognathus was similar to the opening scene
in the original novel, and Dieter Stark's death is analogous to
John Hammond's compy-related death in the novel. Also, Nick,
Sarah, Kelly, and Burke being trapped behind a waterfall by the
female T. rex is taken from the first novel, where Tim and
Lex are trapped behind a man-made waterfall with the T.
rex attempting to eat them.

According to Jack
Horner part of the waterfall scene was written in as a favor
for him by Spielberg. Burke greatly resembles Horner's rival
Robert Bakker. In real life Bakker
argues for a predatory Tyrannosaurus rex while Horner
views it as primarily a scavenger. So Spielberg wrote Burke into
this part to have him killed by the Tyrannosaurus rex as a
favor for Horner. After the film came out Bakker, who recognized
himself in Burke and loved it, actually sent Horner a message
saying "See, I told you T. rex was a hunter!".

Distribution

The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released on Memorial Day, 1997. The film made its VHS debut on November 4, 1997, and was first released on
DVD on October 10, 2000. The DVD includes
deleted scenes that were incorporated into the Fox broadcast television premiere of the
film.

The film was also released in a package with Jurassic Park. The DVD has also been
re-released with both sequels on December 11, 2001 as the
Jurassic Park Trilogy and as the Jurassic Park
Adventure Pack on November 29, 2005. The soundtrack was
released on May 20, 1997. On the same day it was first released to
DVD, a deluxe limited editionbox set was released that included
Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
soundtracks for both films with packaging made exclusively for the
set, two lenticulars, eight 8x10 stills
(4 from each film), and a certificate of authenticity signed by all
three producers of the set, all inside a collector case.

Reception

Box Office

Following four years of growing anticipation and hype, The Lost
World: Jurassic Park broke many box
office records upon its release. It took in $72,132,785 on its
opening weekend ($92.6 million for the four-day Memorial Day
holiday) in the U.S., which was the biggest opening weekend at the
time, surpassing the previous record-holder Batman Forever at $52.8 million. It held
onto this record for four and a half years, until the release of
Harry Potter and
the Philosopher's Stone in November 2001. The Lost
World took the record for highest single-day box office take
of $26,083,950 on May 25, a record held until the release of
Star Wars
Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It also became the fastest
film to pass the $100 million mark, achieving the feat in just six
days. However, its total U.S. box office gross fell below the total
of the original film. With grossing $229,086,679 domestically and
$389,552,320 internationally, the film ended up grossing
$618,638,999 worldwide, becoming the second highest grossing film
of 1997 behind Titanic,
and the 40th highest-grossing film of all time.

Critical

The Lost World received mixed reviews. On the film
aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes,
the film has a 49% "rotten" rating with 28 out of 56 reviewers
giving it a positive review. It also has a 59% on Metacritic. It received much of the same
criticism as the original Jurassic Park, with praise for
the special effects but accusations of flat characterization.
Roger Ebert said, "It can be said that
the creatures in this film transcend any visible signs of special
effects and seem to walk the earth, but the same realism isn't
brought to the human characters, who are bound by plot conventions
and action formulas." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times saw improved
character development over the original, saying, "It seemed such a
mistake in Jurassic Park to sideline early on its most
interesting character, the brilliant, free-thinking and outspoken
theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)
with a broken leg, but in its most inspired stroke, The Lost
World brings back Malcolm and places him front and center,"
calling it "a pleasure to watch such wily pros as Goldblum and
Attenborough spar with each other with wit and assurance." The
dinosaurs were even more developed as characters, with Stephen
Holden of the New York Times saying,
"The Lost World, unlike Jurassic Park, humanizes
its monsters in a way that E.T. would understand." Entertainment Weekly remarked in
2008, "Mr. T-rex was cool in the first Spielberg flick, sure, but
it wasn't until [it was in] San Diego that things got crazy-cool.
It's the old 'tree falling in the woods' conundrum: Unless your
giant monster is causing massive property damage, can you really
call it a giant monster?"